Newcomer

A fanboy fantasy of mine would be to have a Hardware Ray Tracer on board durango. I tried a few demos on my system and it ran slow (CPU based), but would love to get something like this. Yes, I know it won't happen, but I can dream.

Veteran

\7\
If I was a Trekkie, I'd probably break it down arguing that Microsoft seems to strive for a perfectly synchronized BORG Collective while SONY likes to keep their stuff way closer to the United Federation of Planets ...

Regular

Will there be a requirement or push for developers to use that DSP, next-gen? I know it wan't really used this gen.

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A hardware decoder is a huge plus. It makes no sense to waste general purpose CPU/GPU on fixed-function-yet-always-necessary tasks like this.
I clearly remember the massive pain it was to get MP3 decoding running on SPUs in the early PS3 dev days. I believe some of the launch/early titles went with uncompressed or ADPCM audio for that exact reason (at the expense of wasted memory or quality loss respectively).

Newcomer

Some pages before there was a question about the possibility of upgraded instructions Jaguar CPU.
What could be more easier to do. Add instructions to a CPU or design a DSP-Math copro and add to the SoC.
What are the advantages or disadvantages of each option?

Veteran

A hardware decoder is a huge plus. It makes no sense to waste general purpose CPU/GPU on fixed-function-yet-always-necessary tasks like this.
I clearly remember the massive pain it was to get MP3 decoding running on SPUs in the early PS3 dev days. I believe some of the launch/early titles went with uncompressed or ADPCM audio for that exact reason (at the expense of wasted memory or quality loss respectively).

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I can definitely understand the use/purpose of using a DSP. I just didn't think it would be a concern, next-gen. I read a audio tech article, on Gamasutra, saying one SPU could decode 400 mp3 streams in real-time. So, I didn't think it would avoid using much processing power going the DSP route maintaining 7.1 LPCM. Well, the memory reduction I can definitely see being particularly useful.

Regular

Regular

I actually expect that if two cores of 8 are reserved, one of them is just disabled for yields.

Console chips cannot sell the parts with defects as lesser models, so if you leave any resource fully enabled, it means that any defects in it lead to entire chips being tossed. The very minimum I expect to see is one core and one cu disabled in every chip.

So 8 cores in the design, one for os, one for yields. End result is as many threads as the last time around.

VeteranRegularSubscriber

Some pages before there was a question about the possibility of upgraded instructions Jaguar CPU.
What could be more easier to do. Add instructions to a CPU or design a DSP-Math copro and add to the SoC.
What are the advantages or disadvantages of each option?

Click to expand...

IMO, it isn't so much the complexity of adding instructions, but moving the work elsewhere to a more efficient processor. A DSP will be a simple in-order core, probably clocked under 500 MHz and may only be fixed point (although I don't know if modern audio DSP's have moved on to floating point yet or not). It's going to be a tiny core in comparison to a CPU core. For DSP type work loads, it's power efficiency can be orders of magnitude better than the CPU core. I'd guess that AMD/MS would just license a core from a DSP company and they wouldn't be reinventing the wheel.

Chances are the DSP will execute out of it's own cache or local memory space. So not only do you get the benefit of off-loading all the compute to it, you're not polluting the main core's caches with that data either. It's a win-win, imo.

ModeratorLegend

Wondering what is happening with this thread. Many posts just disappeared. Did some sensitive info leak here?

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Odd question. If sensitive info was posted and deleted, your question would only prompt it to be posted again!

There is plenty of ongoing pruning happening as people go OT, with the occasional ban as well for those still unable to comprehend the difference between talking about next-gen hardware and how great/horrible the next-gen consoles will be.

VeteranSubscriber

IMO, it isn't so much the complexity of adding instructions, but moving the work elsewhere to a more efficient processor. A DSP will be a simple in-order core, probably clocked under 500 MHz and may only be fixed point (although I don't know if modern audio DSP's have moved on to floating point yet or not). It's going to be a tiny core in comparison to a CPU core. For DSP type work loads, it's power efficiency can be orders of magnitude better than the CPU core. I'd guess that AMD/MS would just license a core from a DSP company and they wouldn't be reinventing the wheel.

Chances are the DSP will execute out of it's own cache or local memory space. So not only do you get the benefit of off-loading all the compute to it, you're not polluting the main core's caches with that data either. It's a win-win, imo.

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TI High end DSP have fast float engines last time I checked. You can get hybrid designs pretty easy now, something like a Cortex Mx with a DSP engine + decompression unit could be pretty tiny and very capable...

Explanation: PS4 has a higher clock, but less cores and is using an APU solution (CPU & GPU elements combined onto a single chip). The PS4 has less RAM but is using faster GDDR ram, so the overall performance should be a wash.

Explanation: 720 has a lower clock, but more cores. 720 has more but SLOWER RAM. DDR3 RAM is usually good for things like multitasking etc....It is expected to be based on Windows 8 as well.

Note: GDDR ram is more suitable for Graphics Processing (In PS4), and DDR3 is more suitable for OS Tasks (720). It is expected that the 720 may need some sort of ES/ED Ram to compensate. Basically, don't get caught up in the RAM size but the RAM type.

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